Reply To: Leather strop: which side up?
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I just bought some horse butt leather. Tools for Working Wood sells it for about $22USD I think. It’s really thick and stiff which is supposed to prevent dubbing. For 10 years I used an ordinary cowhide leather with green Lee Valley compound following an 8,000 grit diamond plate with excellent results. That was used smooth side up I believe. I’ve also tried compound on plywood and MDF with good results. I’ve even tried bare basswood following the strop just as an experiment. All of this taught me what I learned previously in Ron Hocks outstanding book, which is that honing is merely the process of using an increasingly fine abrasive to obliterate the scratches of the previous abrasive. Reading this book is a big part of what made honing click in my mind so I highly recommend it. Understanding the theory was critical for me to really becoming an outstanding sharpener. Once I learned sharpening theory, I could (and have) successfully sharpened everything from axes to apokeshaves and from chainsaws to card scrapers. Wrap your head around the theory and you will understand when you can use the leather rough side up with compound or smooth side up without. I would use the former coming from a 1200-4000 grit stone, but the latter when my final stone was 8000 or above. Best of all, test for yourself and have fun. Then you will become a subject matter expert and a honing guru.